These are my first two of the Perry's 1st Crusade Hospitaller knights, for a pie-in-the-sky army based around the De Hauteville boys in the 1st Crusade and their fun running the Kingdom of Antioch in the following years.

There's a lot of black and brown isn't there? A big black robe and a vow of simplicity in accoutrements (I may never have written that word down before) doesn't make for a very interesting paint, I must say.

I've also got to say it, these particular Perry sculpts aren't as polished as some of their more recent stuff. They were not easy to get the brush around and there was a lot of extra metal too. Lovely proportions and poses, as always, just not quite as finished as I'd have liked. Still, they brushed up nice in the end.

I've only got the damn models because they were at the show in Penarth and I felt like I needed to come away with something more than a brush and a bag of old-womanish gossip from Stuart. I think I'll keep the Hospitallers to a smallish force and give them some different mates to rub along with.